Read and Write with Natasha
This podcast discusses writing life, reviews books, and interviews authors and industry professionals.
Read and Write with Natasha
From Writing With James Patterson to Paris: A Writer's Journey
When a creative mind trained in Hollywood's competitive structure ventures into the world of novel writing, the results can be illuminating.
Shan Serafin's journey from James Patterson collaborator to solo novelist offers fascinating insights into the modern creative landscape, and a passionate warning about the future of human expression.
Serafin reveals the unexpected path that led him to co-authoring bestsellers with Patterson, crediting his manager for seeing novel-writing potential he hadn't recognized in himself.
"When writing a novel, you create an entire universe," Serafin explains, contrasting this with screenwriting, where directors, designers, and actors share the creative burden.
This collaborative foundation provided crucial storytelling skills, particularly Patterson's ability to identify that critical "one percent" that transforms a good story into an exceptional one.
Now standing at the threshold of his solo career with The Paris Vendetta Serafin shares the ironic origin story of a book he never intended to write.
Having moved to Paris with two clear goals, not to write about the city and not to write about himself, he found himself doing precisely both when COVID isolation and unexpected encounters with European business figures sparked his creative imagination.
But it's when addressing artificial intelligence's role in creative work that the conversation takes its most passionate turn.
Serafin delivers a warning about AI's homogenizing effect on artistic expression: "If you start using AI as a creative person, it will homogenize everyone slowly because it's just basing everything on what currently gets the most attention in the shortest time."
While acknowledging AI's benefits in fields like medicine, he argues that in creative pursuits, it threatens the very diverse human voices that make literature meaningful.
For writers struggling to break through, Serafin offers hard-earned wisdom about nurturing your authentic voice despite rejection.
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But I'm just saying I don't believe that it's any kind of like missiles being shot at us because something wants to take over. So here's where I think the danger is. If you start using AI right now as a creative person, it is going to homogenize everyone slowly because it's going to just base it on what's, as of today, the number one way to get the most attention possible in the shortest amount of time. Right, and it's going to channel your great work.
Speaker 2:Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me today Shan Serafin, who is an American film director, screenwriter and a novelist. As a writer, he continually collaborates with best-selling novelist James Patterson, with whom he has co-authored the Woman's War Come and Revenge, and currently Patterson is now coming out with his first solo thriller, the Paris Vendetta, which is coming out on June 25th. James Patterson calls the Paris Vendetta a smart, high-octane thriller that delivers from the first page to the last. Wow, sean, what an impressive resume. Thank you for joining me today. I'm so excited to have you on the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for the great introduction. I try to live up to everything you just said. I'm just going to put it that way.
Speaker 2:Thank you, saj. So I have a lot of questions I want to talk to you about, ask you and lots of topics I want to discuss. Questions I want to talk to you about, ask you and lots of topics I want to discuss. I think the first thing is how did you meet James Patterson? You know he's, you know one of probably the top selling novelists out there and how did this relationship start?
Speaker 1:And how was the process of the co-writing? Uh, the process was amazing, especially because it occurred when it occurred in my trajectory. Um, but how we met was through. I had a manager at the time named leo, who very insightful, very sharp guy, who saw a potential in me that I didn't really know was there, which was to write books. Uh, I hadn't, I hadn't really thought of myself as a book writer prior to that point. I don't know why, but I think there's a lot of it's.
Speaker 1:You really, in writing a novel, you create a universe, whereas when you're writing a screenplay, you can rely on, you know, the director and the production designer and obviously the actors to flesh it out, whereas as a novelist, it's all your fault, it's all your responsibility. So I hadn't thought of myself that way. He made Leo made the introduction and we started off small, jim and I. It was by Jim, and eventually we built up to bigger things the writing process. I'm not sure if he tailor made our process for me and he uses a different process with other writers, I'm sure he does, but for for me it was. It was amazing to have someone come in to my growth as a storyteller who could just find that one thing to say the difference between like you're 99% there with your story, right, you've written some great dialogue and you have some great conflicts, but that one last one percent of revision is fatal. It's like your story just doesn't work. Like there's, you know, and you or me, I couldn't tell you why, I didn't know what that one last percent was. He had that kind of ability, as sort of a grand master of the genre, to come in and say, like actually he would say a thing.
Speaker 1:But you know, you know the thing that I find the most trouble with even though you know you can advance as a writer and you work on your prose and all that is knowing exactly what your readership knows there's someone sitting on the couch reading your book in the corner and they are anticipating, you know, oh, I think, I think steven is up to something here on chapter three, right. And you as a writer, are just thinking, oh, there's no way they're going to be thinking about steven. You're just typing away and meanwhile your, your readers, your readers, are 14 chapters ahead of you, but at the same time you don't want to be too cryptic where you're, you're so worried that someone's going to catch on to your plot too quickly or your surprises and twists that you really like cover it up.
Speaker 1:And it's such a tightrope to walk, especially in this, this modern landscape, where people are drinking in their content from so many different mediums at once, whether it's binge watching something on a couch or curling up with, like you know, a dickens length novel, or you know a really short novella, or they're dig with, like you know, a Dickens-Lent novel, or you know a really short novella, or they're digesting their news, you know, in 15 seconds on TikTok or something like that. You as an author I mean at least I speak for myself when I say it's a bit overwhelming to try to guess what that was. I think it was easier 10 years ago and 20 years ago, I think. Nowadays, you know, I don't really know exactly where the mindset is that, so I just take my best guess and hope it works so did you have to compete for that role?
Speaker 2:were there any like more writers vetting or trying to to get uh, you know, uh to have the same. But you know, have a co-byline with James Patterson, or was it just he hired you on the spot? I'm just curious.
Speaker 1:No, it starts with a foot race and then we get into the grappling. I actually don't know. I don't know who my competitors were or are. I had a lot of friends ask me like how did you get that job? And I'm quick to say like I really don't know, I'm not even sure how I'm still keeping it. It's really one of more of those types of things, but I would just say probably not. I don't think I had stiff competition. I think, what is more, that he is in a position to just sort of choose what he sees and I know he's got a great workshop as well. He probably draws from there. But I think he's surrounded by so many artists in so many realms, whether it's movie making or TV making or books or YA, that he can draw at any point from a creative person who just knows an author and you know they're probably throwing. So I don't really think my competition was stiff, stiff. I think I was just I got very lucky.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, fair enough. So now you have your, your debut novel I guess your solo novel and I'm congrats. I'm sure you're very excited. Why did you decide to do that, and does that mean you're going to stop collaborating with Jim, or where do you see your future?
Speaker 1:I think, after many years of things not working out the way, I thought that I really this is the smartest thing I've ever learned for myself. I don't know my future and I just happily just keep going, keep mulling along, so to speak, figuring out what I should do. But I believe that it's quite possible that we will link up in the future and write something. I really enjoy collaborating. I know, you know, coming from the film world and the theater world, it's so naturally collaborative, especially as a director, maybe not so much as a screenwriter, but as a director. I think there's very few things in life that are as collaborative as directing. And in fact you're almost to some degree, non-creative, in the sense you're just marshalling forces, right, I mean, obviously that's an exaggeration. But then you switch over to being a novelist and it's you know. I'm sure you could tell me your thoughts on this, but it is a very isolated profession, especially for that period of just raw writing before the revision kicks in where, uh, you know, my, my conversations are with my fridge, really, and I just writing and throwing darts in a dark tunnel, unsure of, like, how any of this is going to land or is landing. So, um, I enjoy the collaborative process. I'm sure it will happen again. Why did I choose to do a solo effort at this point? It really just sort of organically came out of me and we could probably get into this when you want to.
Speaker 1:But I had moved to Paris six years ago for no good reason. I just liked the city and I was at a point where certain projects where the timing was just right for me to write, and then came COVID. So here I am, stuck in a very small apartment in a country where, you know, nobody speaks English. Everyone speaks English here and I felt this, you know, like in Stephen King's story of misery where the author retreats to the mountains in Colorado to do his right Because it's you know you'd be away from the city.
Speaker 1:I thought that was what was going to happen to me in Paris. I don't know why, but I just had this. I thought it was some old world place with some guy playing an accordion on the corner and, you know, somebody brings you your mail on a bicycle and I didn't really realize just how modern and integrated I think that's the key word it's so integrated. It's not isolated in any particular way Paris. So I didn't have a chance to be in this isolation state, except that COVID hit. And then I had all these weird encounters over three or four years where I met European business people. It's just the weirdest journey. I only had two goals when I came here I did not want to write about Paris and I did not want to write about myself and any of the things that I had experienced. I ended up completely failing, there you go.
Speaker 2:Okay. So, sean, your book is coming out next week, right, and I'm sure you're excited and nervous I remember when you know early days of my first novel when it came out. But so you have a blurb from James Patterson and I'm sure that you know it's really going to help with the book sales. And how are the, let's say, the pre-sales going on so far? If you have any idea and have you gotten any reviews so far, you know ahead of the book, I'm just curious how would having a blurb from one of the top novelists out there, how would that affect your sales?
Speaker 1:First of all, the day that I got that blurb from him, I was so happy. I thought I was very generous on his part. It's really a very nice statement that he made. I deliberately don't know anything about pre-sales and I'm so hands-off when it comes to I guess you could call it raw feedback and assessing. I like to create in a vacuum because I've sort of had the fortune to be able to do that. I mean, when you write with Patterson, there's an enormous machine. He's almost his own genre in that sense. All these people working to assess and create and revise based on that and I sort of just stood out of the way and let that big train pass by me.
Speaker 1:Um, where that has left me now is I'm just so new to like the internet. Like you know, my social media is literally brand new. It's like four days old, so I'm just trying to figure it all out. And now I have to like, look at reviews and things like that and, uh, it's really dangerous. I like I like to let my agents read everything and then just tell me very candidly like, oh, don't write that story, that's really dangerous. I like I like to let my agents read everything and then just tell me very candidly like, oh, don't write that story that's here. Like write this, or please stop doing this. That I can handle, um, but you know I maybe I'll turn it over to you. But like just going on the internet and reading, like youtube comments or something like that, it's not the greatest constructive criticism yeah, yeah, oh sure yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, I didn't know, my face looked like that, yeah, but uh, so I believe that, um, that we did have a couple of reviews that came in and, um, I think one of them we printed on the back of the book and it was. It's really a great review. So again, I feel flattered. I don't know how this book is going to land or resonate. I just hope that at least one reader out there besides my mom thinks it's a fun time.
Speaker 2:So okay, so I'm sure you didn't have a hard time finding an agent or a publisher because of you know your current work and your network. So I just want to go back a little in time and see how did you get there? And the reason I ask because I talk with like a number of writers and many of them continue to struggle, you know, from all ages, from the young to the old, to the retired, and is how do they land the agent? How do they self-publish, they publish and it's, it's a struggle and, um, you know you, you seem you've you've made it at at, uh, at an early age of your life. So I just want to go back and talk about your journey. How, how did you get here?
Speaker 1:well, um, I think there's a right I'm gonna screw this story up so badly, but diabloablo Cody was screenwriter one for Juno, yeah, and she said I can't, I can't even say this correctly. She said something like it took me 20 years to be an overnight success. These people talked about her as like oh wow, she came out of nowhere, like she just tripped over a few pages in her living room and said I'll send this. And then that was not the case at all for her and, I think, for myself.
Speaker 1:Many, many years of writing, you know, started in high school, really just writing and writing and writing. And then, you know, I think my fortune is that early on I wrote for an adolescent theater group where I wrote and direct so I could write something and within that same week it would get rehearsed and put up, and so my words were instantly being interpreted, you know, and not only from the actor but from the recipient audience. So I got to watch this exchange and, of of course, you know I'm terrible at it to start it's, but thankfully I had many years to develop there. I kept writing in theater. I'm always writing, and I'm sure many people writing running, you know, would be authors or authors right now who don't have representation, are saying yeah, yeah, I get, I get that, yeah, I get it, I write. You know what, what really is. So I just want to first of all just tell you the bad news. Like, so it's just, I'm new to social media, right, and I'm looking at online for the very first time at the competition or just other books out there, or just like what gets reviewed, and it's like this long, you know you'd like Instagram pages, like yourself yourself, where you just see some person who likes to read and share thoughts on instagram, and it's just like 55 posts of books, all sorts of colors and stuff and shelves, and to me, every title is like, oh god, damn, that's a good title, like you can then go to the next one, that's even better. And I'm just sitting here going like, oh my god, this is what I'm up against. Like I thought, I thought that I was like sending my you know my manuscript in with my little blurb or whatever in my title, and everyone in the office was like, oh my God, how amazing is this first page and sharing it. I actually really don't think that's what's happening at all Now that I see what the what the page one competition is, and let me just say that I think that's an important part of that phrase.
Speaker 1:The page one competition means that so many people have developed great, you know, titles, covers, log lines, pitches, quick blurbs on their stories, especially, you know, in this Netflix culture where they throw their entire budget 50% of the budget of a series or the movie is in the first two minutes, because they know they have to grab you. So you see big action scenes and very compelling things with all sorts of actors. And that model translates to to the publishing world as well, where it's still front loaded. Uh, we're just trying to grab now, get you now, sit you down right now. So, so the in the, the bad news is to to aspiring authors that's what you're competing against. And so, while you're developing substance deep underneath that front page mentality which you absolutely have to do right get your the real book to be as great as possible, you, you also have to become an amazing, like what's the word? Just someone who's able to just quickly give, like one-liners, little punchy things, and you have to have a sense of that culture, right or wrong? I believe in a way it's wrong, because I think, as I look where this is heading. Especially when you put AI into the mix and it starts affecting algorithms, I think we as a society start to race faster and faster. This engine goes faster and faster and the attention span morphs, you know, almost like in an evolutionary way, and I don't know that that's a good thing. So, gee, I'm just full of good news.
Speaker 1:Look, the real thing to do is to write every day and revise even more than you write. So if you're a writer who busts out like three or four hours a day generating new content which is about me on a very, very good, productive content providing day, I'm generating three or four hours. It's so exhausting. Revising though, I can go 12 to 14 hours a day when I sit there and just turn on. Now I really cannot do both. I can't create on the same day that I judge my work. Um, the creation just goes down the tubes. It's just useless. Uh, because I'm just so critical that just everything just stops like after three sentences. Right?
Speaker 1:So I would say that what I've experienced for the collection of aspiring writers that I know over the years, let's say there's not enough revision and there's not enough honesty about whether or not it's resonating on a commercial level, and I think that's the key difference is, you know, it speaks to you as a person, as an individual, and that's great, and I wish we were at that phase where it's like that's great and that's what will work and what will get you a career. But it really has to land and resonate with a lot of people very quickly. And I believe that you can come. I believe that you can come. I believe that you can actually satisfy both goals. I don't think you have to subtract substance to be commercially appealing, especially having worked with Patterson. Uh, but I do think that there isn't really enough revision in what I see from people.
Speaker 1:And and here's something too, now that I'm in Paris, let me just shout this out the French people have a word I won't say it in French, but it looks like recul and that word is how I would see putting your manuscript in the fridge. It's put it away for a while, whether it's a month or three months. You put it away and then you come back to it with fresh eyes. And, yes, you absolutely should involve other eyes too, like your friends or your best creative friend or your most critically savvy friend. You want to involve those.
Speaker 1:But you yourself have to come back to that fridge after some time, pull it out cold and read it at the worst possible moment, not when you're in the best mindset to read it and when you're, like you know, listening to the great music that you want to be thinking about as you read it, but like at the worst moment when you're kind of busy read your stuff and see if it's it's catching you. And if the answer is yes, you're ready for an agent and it's a crime that you don't have one. But if the answer is no, then you need to go in and ask yourself why it's not popping you cold from cold, from right out of the fridge, just hitting you right there, which is, you know, that's the commercial environment we live in, as you know far better than I. Having your social media presence, you know that you have to land and resonate within seconds, right?
Speaker 2:So this is great. I mean thank you for, like, getting into the weeds and I think it's going to be very useful for anyone who's listening or watching. I think I want to go back in time to where you grew up. Where did you grow up? Just curious, what town? To where you grew up. Where did you grow up? Just curious, what town. And how did you know, like from reading about you, you, you know, went to Hollywood, is that correct? And then now you're in Paris. So this journey to making it in Hollywood and back is not an easy journey and not many people can actually make it. So what was your journey? Where did you grow up and how did you go through this journey? Just take us on this journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I spent the majority of my life in Los Angeles specifically to be part of the entertainment industry the screen industry initially, and then I got involved with a lot of theater when I was in la.
Speaker 1:I'd say that was 60 of what I did so you were born in, in california um no, I was actually born in cincinnati, ohio, and we were there for about two weeks. My parents were like, please, yeah, so we, they were kind of hippies, my parents. So we traveled a bit, okay, they did, and I was just there as luggage and I think they went to Florida and Arizona and then ended up in Venice, california, before I eventually went to high school in Northern California and came back to LA.
Speaker 2:Okay, interesting. So you grew up with kind of the culture of theater and movies and that's probably what influenced you. Does that make sense? I'm sorry, I don't think I caught the beginning of the question.
Speaker 1:I'm saying yeah like I.
Speaker 2:so you grew up in in california influenced by you know movies and and hollywood and and theater and production and all of that, so you had the environment that also inspired you to get into that field. Is that correct?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I love the escapism of a good movie. I'm more of a movie person than a TV person, or I'm more of a theater person too. I love to escape, I love to be transported and I really, you know, some of my favorite pieces of art as a teenager were books and you know I had great parents and a great upbringing. But you know, being a teenager is hard, especially where I grew up and with all the different forces at work there, with all the different forces at work there. So to me it was an escape and I've never forgotten that, and I think because I'm also kind of shy. So it's not that I want any attention, but I really want to share and give that same escape to somebody, that same transportation, and that's how it's very much in service. When I write, I'm really trying to serve the reader. I'm always imagining someone like having a hard day at work and coming home and you know they could do a lot of things with their time.
Speaker 1:They could do a lot of things with their two hours or one and a half hours. They could be, you know, online watching stuff or just chatting or whatever. Why would they want my dumb voice, you know, yapping in their head? And so I I really, like, you know, constantly keep that in mind. I'm like wrestling with that. It's like, yeah, why should it be my voice? Unless I'm really trying to serve, unless I'm trying to say, look, I think this is a cool story to tell.
Speaker 1:I've worked really hard at my storytelling skills. Let me see if I can help you escape for a little while. That's what I went to Hollywood for, and you know I had some fun projects that occurred there. I think the thing that so, for anyone out there who writes but isn't a Hollywood-esque writer, what Hollywood brings to the table is structure for your storytelling. Hollywood brings to the table is structure for your storytelling. It's very much about what needs to happen at a certain percentage of the story. As the story travels along, you're like, oh, we're at about 25% right now. What's you know? Are we identifying the core thrusts? That sort of thing.
Speaker 1:I don't know about the novel writing schools of thought, whether that is, as taught, for better or for worse, because I don't necessarily think that's a great thing to be overly structured. Um, it's just happens to be where I come from, um, and then, and then, as you said, just cause you mentioned competition before, um, uh, it's extremely competitive in Hollywood and I don't know that it's the same mentality, uh, in New York with publishing or wherever you live with publishing. So, yes, that part is rough creatively, because you begin to, you're not creating in a vacuum, you're creating in competition to some degree, which I think is horrible. That's really not a good way. And who wants to read or watch that?
Speaker 1:anyway, yeah yeah, it's a competitive creativity.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned AI previously and I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I want to ask you. So there's a lot of people who I would like to call the purists, who would say fiction writers should never use AI, or writers in general should stay away from it. And I've seen others who would say no, I use AI to as a writing assistant, or to help me brainstorm, or like a friend who I ask to look at my manuscript like a beta reader, right, and they can give me good, honest feedback on things. So where do you fall on that scale of of AI?
Speaker 1:do you have five hours I can talk to you? I had a really amazing debate with my dad about this, a fun academic debate, um, because he comes from computer engineering and I come from the creative side, and so we really wanted to explore it with as much academic proof as possible, not just like spouting out our opinions. Um, so I have very, very strong opinions right about this, but let me just practically say for anyone posing that question to themselves as a creative person and specifically as a writer um, if you are using ai right now, in the summer of 2024, it's like getting advice from a really good 15 year old creative writing student. Okay, it's not. It's, first of all, it is very specific. I've experimented with ChatsPT4O, which stands for Odius and Claude Opus, claude 3, opus, okay, and both of them, I think, represent the top as far as language capabilities right, because there's other as ai's that are good at coding and picture generation. Honestly, after months and and thousands of different angles trying to really test it, I can see just how stuck chat gpt 4.0 is in terms of a specific writing style. Right now, you cannot scream and yell and bring a hatchet to the table and try to beat it into submission. You can create. You can create gpts and sort of name them, but it will always default like there's even keywords that you will see in like every chapter you're writing. You're like stop writing with that particular.
Speaker 1:So so I would say right now, if you're using like, let's say, you know, if you're a 12-year-old kid and you want to write, absolutely use AI to help guide you, because it'll say, like your story was a little vague here and some of your descriptions could be this and this and this has a voice. Like you've nurtured this voice for a number of years. It's dangerously damaging to let an ai guide you dangerously damaging. And I say this because I firmly believe that anybody who teaches creative writing should make sure on day one of their classes, that they don't come across as someone who dictates a shape like you. We should all homogenize, and this is the voice, and here's my favorite story. It's Casablanca, and everything you write should imitate Like no, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:I think a really good creative writing teacher should first identify who you are and this is almost the most important thing. What do you like as an author? Like what do you read that turns you on, that floats your boat, because if your teacher, which is AI, doesn't agree that your particular top five books are the top five books, you're going to be shaped away from the voice that you want. So you better be sure that your teacher is aligned with what you believe is even the goal, and I don't think that happens a lot. I think there's a lot of teaching where someone just superimposes what they believe are the ideal story, whether it's Gatsby, which is a great story, or what are the Ulysses, or some Shakespeare stories which are good, some Shakespeare stories which are good. But by no means can we make these cookie cutters that then we use as a rubric to sort of assess and cull from creative people. That's the problem with AI right now if you're using it for advice. So that's probably one of like 58 parts I want to get to.
Speaker 1:But as to whether or not it's creativity, I definitely lean on the purist side here, because you know, know what is ai right now? How is it trained? It is trained on other works of arts, so it's just plagiarism on a mass scale. And if you don't believe that, you don't actually know how it's trained like, go and study how deep learning works and you're going to see that it's. You know, it's just basically like a Mad Libs book at looking at, like vectorization, and what is the percentage chance that this next word should be the word you know, virgo or you know sand? Right, it's just a mathematical calculation based on a lot of people's work. So A it's plagiarism and B this is sort of the largest thing. So A it's plagiarism and B this is sort of the largest thing. I'm just you're not going to be able to shut me up about this, so I'll have to self-shut, but I just want to say this one point here's why it's so dangerous.
Speaker 1:Here's why it's so dangerous and I don't think there's anything we're going to be able to do about it. So everyone predicts, you know how AI could destroy the world, and I firmly believe it is not what we will see in movies. Like you know, the Terminator theory because of a very simple thing why would it need to? If AI truly got self-aware and wanted to take over the world, why would it need to? We already do virtually everything our phone tells us to do. It tells us how to dress, it tells us what jobs to get, it tells us what's cool, where to eat, right. Ai can easily manipulate that and easily have us do its bidding. I don't think that's actually going to happen, by the way the self-aware scenario, but I'm just saying I don't believe that it's any kind of missiles being shot at us because something wants to take over.
Speaker 1:So here's where I think the danger is. If you start using AI right now as a creative person, it is going to homogenize everyone slowly because it's going to just base it on what's, as of today, the number one way to get the most attention possible in the shortest amount of time. Right, and it's going to channel your great work and narrow your storytelling down into this singular voice, this homogenized voice, where, after 10 years, we're all sort of watching the same sort of recipe for attention on our Kindles or paper books or whatever it is. So you know, for the ethics and morality of it, I would strongly urge people to steer clear of AI, to stay true to your human voice and to fight this thing for as long as we can. We're going to lose, but at least I said it once to somebody.
Speaker 2:So this is great. Thank you for sharing your opinion. You're very passionate about it. So I'm going to play the devil's advocate here, because I like to do that. The devil's advocate here because I like to do that.
Speaker 2:So, all right, do you think that we are fearful of it? The same way? Let's say, in the early 18th and 19th century we were fearful of electricity. One example and I just published an article about it there was US President Benjamin Harrison was so scared of electricity that he asked the White House staff to turn on the lights on and off because he was so terrified of being electrocuted. And are we, you know, really, like, afraid of it? We are afraid of it, we are afraid of being electrocuted, and, and that's why we're shouting against it, and eventually we just have to accept it. The same way, we accepted electricity and live with it and realize we cannot live without it. That's one, uh, the second part.
Speaker 2:You mentioned plagiarism and playing the devil's advocate here. Don't we all steal from others? Um, there's even a book called steal like an artist, like we're all influenced by an author that we like or someone, and subconsciously we might actually be stealing and then adding our own voices, um, to it and this is how you because, because, because nobody's voice is completely unique we don't start from scratch. We're all. Our thoughts are a result of of our writings, are a result of what we read, what we consume, and this is, this is what happened. So this was my spiel and I see, if you know, you know, how do you, how would you respond to that?
Speaker 1:This is brilliant. It's great advocacy of the devil. Devil needs a lawyer. You're hired. So what a great gateway.
Speaker 1:Because I'm now going to completely undermine the point that I just made, but I'm going to be strategic here, because I'm not going to undermine all of it. I'm going to say that, outside of what I just said, I think AI is amazing. I think AI is going to help us in so many ways. You know, let's just start medically speaking. They're going to map DNA in a way where we're going to be able to really, you know what was it called Alpha fold? So they did alpha go right, where they finally beat a go champion. This was, I think it's Google based-based. And then they did Alpha Folder, where they finally mapped the genome, or something like that, and both of these milestones represent, you know, incredible processing power.
Speaker 1:And that was just years ago, before large language models came in and just took over all facets of AI, whether it's robotics. So you know, I yeah, I think that AI is going to be amazing in all the ways that technology already applies. And AI is also going to be amazing in terms of advancing us where we're all going to have a level of comfort that we've never had before, like for centuries, like right now. You know, we kind of live like kings, right? We can sit on our couch and just talk into a little rectangle, and then pizza appears at our door right, or a new novel that you want to read, or you know, or a girlfriend you can get anything with this phone?
Speaker 1:right, that's now. And and what person could do that 200 years ago? Right, who was that? Really it was royalty, that's it. Nobody had that kind of you couldn't demand like people and items and things. You can just be a middle, you can be lower middle class and achieve that right yeah so I do think ai is amazing.
Speaker 1:I completely agree with you. Love the anecdote about electricity. Um, I think fear sells, greed sells and fear sells and fear sells more than greed. I think fear sells, and that's why the rhetoric right now is largely negative, because it's so fun to think it's over and we're doomed. Right, that's exactly what I said. But I'm being very specific to arts and attention, specifically novel writing and movie watching as well, because AI will generate movies.
Speaker 1:In this regard, I think AI is going to be unleashed on us as an attention-getting mechanism or attention-getting consultant. It's like AI will be the ultimate advertising consultant for your firm. It will figure out exactly how many words to say or what color to put in what corner of the screen, or whose ethnic pixels get the most interest in this bottle of shampoo, and it will be so effective at capturing attention that I don't think we'll be able to stop it. Um, and one of the reasons we won't be able to stop that part of it is because you can ask anyone. You could ask ilya sesko for the guy who created chad gpt total genius, right? I don't think he's there anymore at opening eye, but many people who were experts at deep learning. Who created the models, who are part of this new wave, don't actually know why and how it's working right now. It's well documented you can find them all saying this that all of a sudden, when you used a transformer model in language, for some reason, tuberculosis x-ray recognition skyrocket. So it's like here you take something over here that has nothing to do with something over here and it applied, and the crossover is uncertain for many of the experts, as well as the internal mechanics of what's going on, because we're talking about billions and potentially trillions of little decisions that are going to make little evaluations. Right, how could a human being possibly know what's under the hood of a machine like that?
Speaker 1:And I believe that once you get this thing started, specifically with attention I'm just talking about the dangers of attention I don't know that we can really reverse it, because it will be infiltrating everywhere. Having said that, though, I think the upside of AI far outweighs the downside of it in terms of the threat. Um, no question on that. Do I want to live in a world in which we have ai? Absolutely, I think it's going to help. It's going to help us build better bridges. It's going to help us with medicine. It's going to help us. Actually, this might not be a good thing, but we're going to be living a lot longer very soon, right? Because it's going to help reverse the aging process and cellular breakdown, right.
Speaker 1:So what does that mean? I mean, you know we're probably somebody today has been. Somebody born now might be one of the first people who will not die, because by the time they're 100, 120, the technology will have evolved to the point where we might have arrested the decrepitude of cellular structures between the human body and you could potentially want to live forever or just a very, very long time are you following brian johnson on youtube?
Speaker 2:he's the guy.
Speaker 1:No, but I will after that comment. Why is he amazing? What does he do? Talk to me, Brian.
Speaker 2:No, brian, his whole thing is not dying and he believes that he's not going to die and he has his whole company. He created a company that revolves around longevity and how the idea is that dying is a disease that you can reverse. So I don't know, we'll see. We'll just keep watching on youtube how he's aging but yeah okay so that's something you get. Yeah, you reminded me of, but yeah, there's. There's a big movement now about longevity and health span and lifespan and where do you stand on this?
Speaker 2:on on longevity or on ai in general?
Speaker 1:yeah, actually we'll start with that. I mean, that's sort of a spiritual based question, right on the thing, if we live, if we live forever.
Speaker 2:Um, do you want to live forever? That is the question. Uh, I read that you're a buddhist as well, so you, you probably you have different views than that. Uh, I think for me, I want to live. I'm more interested in health span than lifespan, so, oh nice. So for me, I'm interested in aging well and being in a in a good shape mentally and physically, and using whatever tools, whether it's ai or, you know, exercise or eating well, that would help me and my family and my loved ones get there, because you can live until you're 150, but what's your lifestyle? What's your health span? So that's where I am when it comes to it.
Speaker 1:Very practical. I like that health span. Is that yours? That's great.
Speaker 2:No, it's Peter Atiyah's book. It's called. What's the name of it? You know Dr Peter Atiyah's book. I forgot the name of the piece. You know Dr Peter Atiyah's book. I forgot the name of the book, but he's someone that I highly recommend. It would be actually one of a dream of mine to have him on my podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm sure it'll happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe you can help me out, since you're very well connected.
Speaker 1:No, but I have strong thoughts about death, yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so that's where it comes from. So, all right, I know I took a lot of your time and I'm a very busy man. So, before we conclude, I want to ask you for aspiring authors and, as I mentioned before, I talked to a lot of authors. Some of them are really well-established, like yourself, and others are still starting, and I like to keep the door open for both. And so what would be your number one tip that you would tell someone that's really struggling to make it out there? I mean not in terms of writing, honestly, because in terms of being recognized, in terms of having someone betting on them, whether it's a publishing company, whether it's an agent or I don't know, a Hollywood production house or something, how, like, what is your tip for people who are about to give up and say it's like nobody cares of you know, nobody cares about what they do First of all, it breaks my heart to hear a phrase like that Because I, you know, I empathize with that position.
Speaker 1:It's brutal, it's dark and, let's be clear, I don't know that I will never experience that. Okay, again it's. I don't feel like I'm out of some sort of tunnel. Um, I feel like I'm sort of in it, like near a good spot where I can sort of see the sun. Yeah, that's where I feel like there's a train behind me.
Speaker 1:So I would say that the number one thing that you need to do is you need to stop trusting the rhetoric out there about what writing should be and where you're at and what value you have in the community as a whole community as a whole, because most of the messages right now will tell you um to to either quit or to just be different or just be this one thing. As much as we're sort of preaching an open-mindedness as a culture or at least half of us are there there is a real uh, homogeneity to it. We're really getting funneled down one particular way of telling a story, or you know the content and I, you know it's because I want to say it this way, because I don't really have I'm not some guru on the mountain who you know can spout wisdom say you know, wait three days with a cup of water on your left shoulder, yeah, the manuscript will be published. No, I don't know exactly, but I do know this that the rhetoric out there is so poisonous. The feedback that you believe that you're getting, that's high quality feedback, is so poisonous to what is your voice? If you're nurturing a voice, you know it's important, it's going to be part of our collective library one day, that voice, that story, those stories that you want to tell, and you simply believe that a few rejection letters from an agency, or just you know, zero contact, or whatever it is where you're not feeling traction. If you believe that's any sort of legitimate indication of anything, um, all I can say is please don't don't feel that way. Um, like is, please don't don't feel that way. Um, at the same time that I say that I think it's really important to, to always be trying to get better, to to serve, serve a readership, you're either right.
Speaker 1:There's two reasons to write either you're writing to express, which is great, or you're writing to serve your reader, which is also great. I write I in both ways, but, believe it or not. My default is just to express and it's only to me like I kept a journal for at least 25 years where I would write about five pages a day, one hour a day, and no one to this day has ever read this journal. And you know, I couldn't exist a day without writing in it, because I just felt it needed to be documented, even though no one and, believe me, I don't want anyone to read it, no one would ever read it besides myself but for some reason I had to have it printed. I had to have the words out there. So that's the expression side of me, right? I know it's such an important thing to express. And on the flip side, if you want to be a commercially successful writer, if you want to make income maybe all of your income from writing, please know that you have to serve.
Speaker 1:And if you're continuing to get feedback where something is not landing, there's all sorts of books and videos and guides out there that can help you write and almost nobody has the capacity to tell you exactly what it is you're going to need to fix. This is something you learn in Hollywood is that when a script doesn't work, everyone has feedback and none of it is the same. You give a bad script to 10 studios. Every single studio will have a different note for you, and what you can then say to yourself is okay, I know for sure, I don't have a commercially viable script. That's the only thing you know. You don't know that it's like oh, it's because my main character needs to be, you know, older or younger, or you know these two people need to fall in love and then kill each other. You don't know that to be true, and most of those notes are terrible notes, right? So really, you know, decide whether or not you're expressing or serving.
Speaker 1:Both are great, and if you are serving and nothing is landing like you're really putting yourself out there. Just know that you are doing something that you could be doing better in terms of reaching a commercial audience. But most of the feedback that you're going to get is not actually going to be the right feedback. It's only you who are going to be able to figure it out. And again, that French word which sounds, from an American point of view, actually going to be the right feedback. It's only you who are going to be able to figure it out. And again, that French word which sounds from an American point of view, like recule, that's what you need.
Speaker 1:You need some time away from your stuff and come back to it and you don't even have to worry about being your own worst critic. You will be a critic because you're going to see it fresh and you won't remember what paragraph is next and you'll be like I wrote that. I mean, I cringe all the time and then you know. The third thing I would say is that I don't know many writers who feel like they've arrived at the mountaintop. I think most creative people I know, but specifically writers um, are really sort of uh, insecure in a good way, in the sense that we're always trying to get better. You know, we're always reading and writing, reading and writing, reading and writing.
Speaker 2:Great, or we can always ask AI to give us feedback. I'm joking, all right, so this has been great. Sean, thank you very much. So how can people reach you? How can they get your book? Your book is coming out next week, so if anyone wants to get in touch with you I know you're not on social media or you're just starting getting social media- yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have three followers on Instagram, so if I'm looking for a fourth, Okay, I'll be your fourth. Okay, and then we're looking for a fourth, I'll be your fourth. And then when I'm looking for a fifth beetle and I believe my handles are all the same and it's a, it's a un-American in Paris, it's a pun on American.
Speaker 2:I got it.
Speaker 1:That's because some nuns beat you into getting that Exactly.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, actually, you know I'm very shy about social media until now, and now I realize that I kind of have to do it and so you know I'm flipping the switch. Here's the deal. I am shy about expressing on social media, but I am the number one ingester of social media. All day long I'm like looking at twitter and youtube and stuff like that and, just you know, benefiting from other people's hard work with no contribution whatsoever. So now I'm turning around and trying to contribute. So, yeah, interact with me. I'm definitely. And especially if you're an aspiring writer and you know you want to just complain or vent or whatever, or post something funny, let me know know.
Speaker 2:Sure. Here is one thought which is I read somewhere. I'm not sure about the number, but it's only 1% of people create on social media. The rest are consumers. So congrats, you're now part of the 1%.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's horrible. But yeah, I've been that 99. I think I'm about 83% of the 99%. That's how bad I am. But yeah, happy've been that 99. I think I'm about 83% of the 99%. That's how bad I am. But yeah, happy to join that side. It's tough but yeah.
Speaker 2:Welcome to our ivory tower of the 1% yeah ivory tower.
Speaker 2:But, shan, thank you very much for your time and I really enjoyed chatting with you, and best of luck with your novel and your future projects, and for anyone who is listening or watching. Thank you for joining us today for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and until we meet again, thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time, happy reading, happy writing.
